


Dreams, Blood, and Movie Night

by Corvid_Knight



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, First Kisses, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, dead daves, good boys, meteorfic, mildly canon divergent but still within the realms of possibility, my take on how dave's powers work, my tumblr is knight-of-heart-and-art, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 14:34:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12843228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Dave falls asleep during movie night. This leads to another movie night. This leads to...well, complications due to time fuckery and doomed Daves.





	1. Chapter 1

 This isn't the beginning of how it all happens, but finding the beginning would require a shitton of explanation and extrapolation that you don't consider yourself to be the correct person to supply, so here is where—and more importantly, when—you arbitrarily place the marker of "it started here." Just one more movie night, after you two watched Karkat's choice and he's quit grumbling over what you chose for yours. That took more than a third of the movie, honestly. 

 You don't mean to fall asleep, either—it's a good movie, even if you've seen it enough times to do karaoke to every goddamn scene—but Karkat, amazingly, doesn't shove you off when you unthinkingly lean over onto him. And he's warm. And you're so fucking tired—you don't sleep well at the best of times, and it gets worse for the couple weeks after you deal with any kind of dead-end timeline. It's been awhile since you've had more than a couple days between having to do that. 

 So yeah, you're tired. Enough so that you're half-out when Karkat nudges you gently. "If you fall asleep and make me watch this alone, Strider," he murmurs, "we're watching two of mine next time."

 "Uh..." If he just lets you sleep, it's worth it, but you still want to argue. Point of principle. "One an' a half." On the other hand, you're past the point of being able to form a coherent argument, which puts you at a distinct disadvantage unless you're willing to wake all the way up, which you aren't. 

 Karkat just snorts at your counterdemand. "Idiot. Go the fuck to sleep," he tells you, not unkindly, and shifts a little to pull one of the blankets from the other side of the couch over you. "Here. Don't want to break these fuckers, right?" And as you close your eyes he carefully plucks your shades off your face, folding them and setting them safely on the coffee table. 

 "Dude..." Ask for them back?

 ...nah. He's right, go the fuck to sleep. 

 

 The dreams aren't too bad. Not this time. You sleep through them, at any rate; today at least you won't get stuck explaining why you sometimes wake up with a half-strangled scream in your throat, how when you wake up from a nightmare all the times you've ever experienced collapse into one point, a hyperdense moment of now that petrifies you so fully that you often can't move for full minutes after opening your eyes for fear that some monster, some friend-turned-enemy, some ghost out of your messy, tangled string of a life is going to reach out and grab you and try to end your life one more time. 

 There's still a moment of pure confusion when you wake up and find yourself tangled up with someone warm and asleep, the TV still on and roughly three-quarters of the way through a second loop of your movie, judging from the altogether-too-large vacuum cleaner onscreen. Yeah, there is a second of doubling-back or collapsing in, déjà vu, whatever, because you don't know where you are and the last time you fell asleep watching this movie you couldn't have been older than eight. 

 The second lasts until Karkat grumbles in his sleep, shifting to butt his head gently against his shoulder without opening his eyes. 

 Huh. 

 He's got his arms around you. You've got a feeling that, until you woke up, you were holding him. You rectify the problem of you not holding him before actually starting to consider the situation in general. Does this count as weird? As in, is this the position you're supposed to be in with the dude who's either your best bro or tied for the spot, the other contender being John? You never ended up asleep on the couch with John, that's for sure, but hey—Karkat isn't John. Not even human. Is this a troll thing? You don't think it's a troll thing. 

 One of the very quiet voices in the back of your head wants to point out that it doesn't exactly seem like a normal bro thing either, but you smash that one down like an annoying bug. Whatever else you could think can just go to hell—this is pretty close to the best you've felt in months, and Karkat seems to be okay with it too, judging by how he's settled back down next to you.

 More than okay, maybe—he's making a noise, rumbling very softly in his chest. Purring. You've only gotten him to do that maybe three times in all the time you've known him, twice by messing with his hair when he was leaning on you halfway through a romcom and once when you sewed up his sweater after he ripped it. All those times, he stifled it as soon as he realized that you'd noticed, though, and you've never gotten to be this close to him, close enough to feel the vibration through every point of contact. 

 There's a lot of those. With anyone else, maybe an uncomfortable amount, but this...this is okay. Good. Definitely good. The fact that you're happy with this is, in and of itself, either something to analyze or something to be uncomfortable with, or both. 

 Goddamnit. Why do you need to think about shit?

 You're comfortable. In this moment, you're good, this is good. Just...don't fucking think about shit. 

 Not thinking about shit is made considerably easier by the fact that Karkat's purring is about to put you back to sleep. Which is also good. You probably need it. 

 

 Sleeping unfortunately means dreams. Technically, nightmares—worse ones than usual. You're used to dreams that are some flavor of memory—you die, people die, it's your fault, sometimes you were the one to kill them and sometimes you're just too fucking slow and weak to keep them alive—but this is just a little different, because this didn't happen. Unless, of course, it's happening now and you only think you're dreaming it because you won't or can't accept that you fucked up this badly. 

 It's Karkat. Of course it's Karkat, he's the only one you've never gotten killed, never seen dead in all the timelines you've watched die, and of course it's here on the roof of the apartment building you spent most of your life in—god, it doesn't feel like a dream. Too fucking crystal clear, you can feel how hot his blood is as you try to get the bleeding to stop. That's not happening, though—something sliced him open, damn near gutted him. He's not godtier and you don't think you are either, not yet. He's bleeding out and you can't go back and undo whatever happened to leave him like this. You can't fucking do anything other than kneel here and know that your efforts to keep him from dying are perfectly useless, and that it's your fault he was here at all.

 There's blood on your hands. So fucking much. 

 He's not breathing—

 "Strider. Dave. Wake up before you fucking hyperventilate."

 You open your eyes. 

 Karkat's frowning down at you; if you'd had to guess you'd have assumed he's pissed at you,  but his voice stays surprisingly gentle. "You alright? Bad dreams?" 

 "I—" Oh, yeah, your breathing is halfway between panting and gasping, and you can't get more than that single syllable out before you have to stop. Getting it under control again is a bitch, too, and it gives you time to realize that your hands are twisted in his sweater, clenched into fists hard enough to hurt. Letting go is hard. Thankfully, Karkat doesn't call you on it. "Kinda, yeah...sorry, man." You shake your head, sitting up and going to adjust your shades. 

 Which are on the table, actually. You very nearly put your own eye out. 

 "Mm." Karkat growls softly—you think it's a growl; you're still not an expert on all the noises he makes—and snags your shades off the table, holding them out to you. "Why?" 

 "Uh." You're too confused by the question to do more than accept your shades and stare at him like a newly discovered species of idiotbird. "What?" 

 He rolls his eyes, gathering the blanket up and starting to fold it. "Why the fuck are you sorry? I wouldn't exactly count dreams as something even Mr. In-Control Strider could do anything about. Well. Unless that's something humans can do." Karkat glances over at you, smirking slightly. "In which case, you need your head examined." 

 That one gets a smile out of you. "Thought you've been telling me I needed to do that anyway." 

 "Shut up." But hey, he's still smiling. Grudgingly, but it counts. 

 "Never going to happen." You shrug, actually putting your shades  
back where they belong. "Sorry for waking you up." Nah, he was right the first time. You're sorry for being stupid enough to have nightmares that'll wake him up. And for letting him die in them. 

 "Oh." The shades make it a hell of a lot easier to watch Karkat without letting him know. Right now, he just looks a little confused. Or relieved. Hell, or uncomfortable. You're shit at reading people. "Yeah, no. Don't worry about it. This is more sleep than I get anyway, so...thanks." 

 Now. Now you're confused. Also weirdly happy that you did something helpful, assuming that getting him to sleep is helpful, and you're going to say that it probably is. Definitely is. 

 And you're just staring at Karkat, and shades or no shades, he's noticed. 

 Shit. Not cool. 

 Say something, idiot. 

 "Want to have movie night again tomorrow or something?" Shit, not that. That didn't come out even a little casual. 

 But miracle of miracles, Karkat doesn't call you on that one either. "As long as I get my double-feature romcom, fuck yes." Nothing in the smile he gives you but happiness and sharp nubby teeth, either. 

 "You got it, dude." Gotta give him a sincere smile back. "See you then." 


	2. Chapter 2

Of course, given a day to actually think about it (and over-think it), you start seriously wondering if he meant it. 

 Usually, you're aware of when you're being clingy, enough to force yourself to not let anybody know just how much you desperately want to be around them. Yesterday was definitely more than a little out of character for you, and it's entirely possible that you just took Karkat by surprise and he just agreed out of reflex. Of course, if he did mean it and you don't show, there's a good chance he'll literally never speak to you again.  
   
 In the end, after a good ten minutes of consideration, you text him asking if he'd accept a romcom of your choosing as one of the two picks. If he comes back asking why the fuck you'd want to choose that—if he seems confused at all—you'll brush it off. Forget the whole thing. 

 It's a bit surprising how much you don't want that option. 

 He answers back, though, just a quick "FUCK YES, LETS SEE HOW BAD YOUR TASTE IN MOVIES IS FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME" before you have much time to consider exactly what flavor of affection is powering your desire to end up watching shitty movies next to Karkat. 

 Well. You could keep working that one out, or you could try to figure out what exactly constitutes a romcom. Somehow you don't think Little Shop of Horrors is going to cut it. 

 Eventually you round up a small stack of DVDs, cross your fingers that at least one is acceptable, and head over to Karkat's room. He's left the door not just unlocked but just barely cracked open, which you take as a signal not to knock. You do shut the door behind yourself, though. 

 "Karkat, my dude, you're about to get a rare treat, as in if it was a horse it'd be a fuckin' unicorn, because I have here in my hands a select choice of—holy shit." Running your mouth is one of your specialties, but there's a point where surprise is enough to shut you up. 

 "Holy shit what?" Karkat has moved the couch back, pushed the coffee table back against the wall, and piled what seems to be every pillow and blanket available on the meteor into...well, a pile. A fucking huge one. And he's sitting on or in it—you're not totally sure of the operative verb here—looking up at you quizzically. "I'm not spending another couple of hours trying to keep you from falling off the couch when you fall asleep. C'mon." He pats the blankets next to him. "What've you got?" 

 What—oh. Movies. Yeah. 

 You sit down next to him, shoving a few pillows around and passing the discs over. "Fucking perfect ones, man, romance and comedy and whatever the fuck else you want, right?" Stop. Talking. You're making less sense than usual. 

 "Mhm." Karkat absently swats at your shoulder, reading the backs of the cases you handed him. "Do you know the meaning of those words? Any of them? Because honestly, I'm seeing fuck-all evidence of your understanding of the word 'romcom' here." 

 That wasn't entirely unexpected. "Not my fault you can't recognise genius when you see it." One movie he likes, that's all you ask. You grin at him, shrugging and spreading your hands. "You hold in your hands some of the best entertainment Earth has—had—to offer, at least in the genre you're asking for. Now, you can ask around, check with John or whoever, but you're still going to end up with—" 

 "Dave. Seriously." He separates one DVD out of the stack, reaching over to set the rest on the table before scooting forward to put the one he picked in the player. Grabbing the remote, he gets the movie started before coming back to your side. "What the fuck are you freaking out over?" 

 Shit. "No idea what you're talking about, bro," you lie, hopefully convincingly, trying to pretend that the guy onscreen is vastly more interesting than this conversation. "I don't do 'freaking out,' you know that. Not in the Strider repertoire." 

 Karkat snorts, pushing some of the blankets around and settling in them like a bird in a nest before leaning over onto you. "Fuck your repertoire. You've got more shit in there than you let me see, and you keep adding more to it all the time, don't you?" 

 "Uh." He has a point, not that you're going to admit it. Time to end this line of conversation, if you actually can. "Let's just. Watch the movie, right? That's what I'm here for." No, not really, but no way can you say that being here, on Karkat's couch or floor or wherever, is exponentially better—safer—than staying in your own room. 

 "That's what you're here for," he agrees, and why the fuck should having your own words fed back to you taste so very insincere? Other than the fact that you didn't totally mean them when you said them, of course. "I'll shut the fuck up if you do, deal?" 

 "Deal, yeah." 

 You actually honestly like this movie, too; it's pretty easy to shut up and watch it, and only think about the fact that Karkat's curled up leaning on you a little bit.  

 He's more than halfway asleep when the man in black starts screaming; you only realise this when he jerks awake at the sound of it, one hand latching onto your arm tightly enough that you fear for the integrity of your shirt and possibly your skin. "Fuck—" he yelps, and follows that up with a good twenty seconds of clicking, buzzing Alternian before switching back to English. "Fuck!" 

 (Or maybe that word's just the same in both languages. That makes more sense than some of the other weirdass universal constants you've found.) 

 You're fumbling for the remote and the pause button even as he's cussing you out or whatever, stopping the movie before he gets that second recognisable expletive out. "Hey, Karkat—you okay?" If he is, he doesn't look it—spooked out of his mind, yeah, in that weird place between fight and flight that you know a little too well, but not really okay. He's staring at the image frozen on the TV, breathing not just even but in perfect, tense, brittle control, and he's still got a goddamn deathgrip on your arm. "Karkat, dude...it's okay. It's just the movie, I swear. Look at me?" 

 It takes him another second, but he does, wide yellow eyes focusing on you before he reaches up with his free hand to push your shades up enough that he can see your eyes. When he does, a little bit of the tension or rage or fear or whatever the fuck he's filled with right now goes out of him. As he settles the shades back down on your nose, Karkat's grip on your arm relaxes. 

 "Just the movie," he repeats, his voice rougher than usual. "Just the fucking movie, not drones—okay. Fuck, I thought—never mind. Give me the remote." He makes a grab for it, and you reflexively hold it out of reach. Force of habit. 

 "No drones. I promise." You hold down fast-forward until the stupid torture scene's past—maybe you'll lose a little of the plot, but fuck, you don't like this part either—dodge Karkat's second attempt to get the remote, and drop it in his lap. "They'd have to go through me before they laid a—tentacle? Leg? What the fuck do drones even look like? Fuck it, but I wouldn't let 'em touch you." Maybe that was supposed to make him laugh. Smile, at least. 

 Instead, he growls quietly, with a note that you tentatively identify as fear, and grabs the remote. "Don't." 

 "What?" 

 "If it comes to that, you get the fuck away from me." Karkat hunches up a bit, staring at the still image on the TV rather than look at you. "You don't know what drones are like...they'd chew you up and spit you out in a million fucking pieces, and that's not something you'd come back from. Especially if you were doing it for me." He glances at you, blinks, shrugs, and turns his attention back to the TV as he starts the movie again. "You can't—fuck. Just don't do it, if it comes to that. It's—fifty shades of fucking pointless...bad movie, by the way. Not this one, Fifty Shades, that one—" 

 "You suck at changing the subject worse'n I do, dude." So he's worried about the possibility you'd die for him? Or something? "You're right, though. That movie sucks. And hey—I'm not an idiot. I can get you out safe if I need to, so long as whatever's after you doesn't do time-travel." 

 "Maybe." Karkat sighs, leaning against you again; before you can consider the appropriateness or lack thereof of the action, you put one arm around his shoulders. "I thought you didn't use the time shit unless it was the only way to keep the game from breaking." 

 True, pretty much. Looping is so fucking hard, and going back to change things means a death sentence for both you and the timeline, but there's still one other option. "Eh. Can't make a paradox if I only go forward, right? Disappear from now, go straight into next week or whatever." Of course, you'd just drop him and go back to deal with the drone or whatever, but there's not really any need to bring that up at the moment. 

 "Easy, huh?" Karkat shakes his head. "Dave, you're a fucking liar when you want to be, aren't you?" While you're still trying to decide whether or not to dispute that, he adds, "Hey, if you're still awake when this ends, put another movie in. Anything you want, so long as there's no screaming and shit." 

 Small chance of that, either you being awake or of choosing a violent movie right now, after seeing how much this one scene fucked him up. "Yeah, man. Sure." 

 "Mhm." Karkat glances at you, hesitates, and curls a but closer to you in the arc of your arm, closing his eyes. 

 He's out quick. You can tell, because he starts purring almost as soon as he falls asleep. It's still the most soothing sensation you've ever experienced, and sure enough, you don't make it to the end of the movie.   
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just as a warning, the next chapter is the one with the blood.


	3. Chapter 3

Dreams. Fuck 'em. Not worth having, not worth remembering...even if you always do. You wake up a shitload less afraid than usual, though, probably because Karkat's draped across you like a warm and living blanket, muttering unintelligibly in his sleep. The TV's still on, but the DVD player isn't, so other than Karkat's sleeptalk, the only sound is a quiet hiss of static. All in all, this is definitely okay. 

 Except you need to get up and go to the bathroom. It's not that you need to piss—you just...have a feeling. A bad one. You just know that you need to disentangle yourself from Karkat, whether or not you want to, and get your ass in there. Unless, of course, you want something bad to happen. 

 Fuck paranoia. 

 Please let this just be paranoia, something with no fucking base in this reality, no base in anything but your fucked-up mind. That's what keeps running through your head as you inch your way out from under Karkat, somehow managing not to wake him up. You realise that you're actually muttering "please, fuck, please, please," under your breath, over and over again as you make your way through the room, and you have to bite down on your tongue to be able to shut up as you open the door. 

 Even before your hand finds the light switch, you know it's bad. Blood has a smell, you know it much better than you should, and this place is full of it—iron and copper, metallic and ugly, strong enough that you hesitate before you hit the lights. 

 "Oh, god, not this again, please..." Too fucking late to deny it. And you're not even a little surprised to see yourself—a version of yourself who's been beat halfway to hell and back, one who's covered in blood, still bleeding enough that you know that even if he wasn't doomed now he'd still be dying—kneeling next to the shower, blinking slowly up at you as you freeze for a second. There's a lot of blood, so fucking much, and as much as you know that you need to get down there with him and find out what happened this time, for the first second you can't bring yourself to get down in all that blood. 

 The Dave on the floor shakes his head slightly, wincing at the movement and shifting a little. "Close the fucking door before he wakes up, dude." His voice is hoarse, almost broken, and you know without asking that maybe four hours ago from his point of view and months or years in one of the thousand possible futures from yours, John slammed him against a wall, wrapped his hands around your—his, goddamnit, his—throat and squeezed past the point where everything started to go black. You also know that John wasn't John, at that point, any more than Rose was just Rose when she went grimdark. 

 "Get down here," he says as you carefully close the door.   
 "Yeah, just...shit." He's past the point of caring about blood, but you sure as hell ain't, not that you have a choice. You still have to force yourself to come over and squat down next to this latest doomed iteration of yourself—and try, so fucking hard, not to think about how it's not just blood on your bare feet, it's your blood, still warm and wet, not even dried enough to start to be tacky and oh god you're going to freeze up or be sick in a minute or so. Not yet. Hold all that shit back, for just a little while...you can manage that, right? "What went down? You put it back together yet, or do I need to go do that save-the-world shit again?" 

 "Nah." He shakes his head again, hisses in pain again, and almost goes over backwards as the motion unbalances him, one hand going out to grab at your shoulder and leaving red smears on your white shirt. "I'd be...a shitload less fucked up if I came here before I dealt with the bastard." He sighs, wrapping his other arm more tightly around his stomach, and you try very hard not to think about how his shirtsleeve's stained and soaked red all the way past his elbow. "It'll be fine, for you. That bit at least. It's as dead as those fuckers ever get." 

 "Horrorterrors." It's a guess—the weird-spooky self-telepathy, foreknowledge, whatever you want to call it, is gone for now. He still nods slightly as you reach out to steady him. Is there anywhere on him that isn't bloody? Probably not. 

 "Yeah. Itty-bitty one, you know? Little enough that one—pissed-off idiot with a crappy sword and nothing to lose could take it out..." His voice cracks halfway through the last sentence, he meets your eyes—it's like looking in a fucked-up mirror—and for a second you see the thing, all eyes and teeth and razor-sharp tentacles on a body that shouldn't be able to be that shape in a euclidean universe, bigger than anything has a right to be but somehow folded down into a space not much bigger than a minivan. 

 "So we're lucky," you say, as calmly as you can. It's what he's thinking, anyway. It's...ironic. Not in a good way. "How bad was it, on your end?" 

 "Bad." One word, but the weight of exhaustion and pain in it is enough that you know that the process of having his memories filter into your head is going to be pure hell. "I—we lost pretty much everyone this time. John wasn't dead. The others..." You can almost feel an echo of the pain in his throat as he stops talking, eyes losing their focus for a second before he blinks and looks at you again. "I tried, man, okay, fuck, we tried so hard—" 

 "Yeah. I know. I—we always do." Oh, fuck, if the tears in his eyes spill over, you're going to lose it, end of story. "They're alive. They're gonna stay that way this time." And if something happens, this time it'll be your turn to go back and die.

 'Course, it's always you who goes back. Every one of the Dave's you've seen die is you, except for the insignificant divergence between when they came from and when they came back to. You know that. Thinking about it, though...that's not something you can handle right now. 

 "This time," he echoes, and closes his eyes for a second, his hand tightening on your shoulder. "Yeah, gotta believe that, right? Hey...you got your sword? Mine's...well, gone." 

 "Fuck. No. I don't." This is probably the only place you don't bring a weapon with you, the only place you don't even think about needing it. You glance up at the medicine cabinet, at the mirror that could be broken into any number of sharp-edged pieces. "He'll have...razors. Something sharp. Everybody does." God, you hate this part, you don't fucking want to, you can't...no. You can. Have to.

 But he's still and silent for just long enough that you almost have time to think you won't need to, before he opens his eyes and nods. "...yeah. Hope so. Find 'em, and...well, shit. Cut the fucking loose ends here, right?" The grin that he forces across his face looks like it hurts him. It definitely hurts you. 

 You keep everything off your face, though, and just nod, gently pushing him back so he's leaning against the wall and you can let go without having him just collapse. "Right. One minute." 

 You're already digging in Karkat's medicine cabinet and watching your hands shake enough to knock half the shit in there over when he says, almost quietly enough that you can't hear him, "Better make it a quick one. Karkles doesn't sleep long when he's alone...you don't want him seeing this shit." 

 Oh, fuck. Karkat. You need to finish this, clean it up, get rid of all this fucking mess before he wakes up. Right now. 

 Funnily enough, that little boost of panic makes it even harder to find what you're looking for: a box of razor blades, brand new and still sealed. He's never used them, and you don't know or really care why he has them. You get the box open, extricate just one and set it on the counter before bending down to haul the Dave on the floor half-upright—he gasps in a choked almost-sob, but tries (and fails) to get his legs under himself and help you as you pull him over into the shower. As you lower him down you grab the razor, sitting on the floor carefully so as not to cover the drain and waiting for him to lean back on you. 

 This isn't the first time. Was there ever a first time, or have you always known about the vein just behind your ear, the one that's close to the surface and easy to find and cut, the one that's messy as hell but kills you quick and more painlessly than almost any other way to die? 

 Like every other time, that part is, mercifully, over in just a few minutes. Getting rid of the body is the easy part—wrap your arms around him, go forward in time to a week from now, when the meteor's gone from this position and there's nothing left here but empty space, let go, and do the time-fuckery again to come back.   
 God, blood everywhere, and you can't even have the luxury of just shutting down for awhile before you deal with it, because you're on a time limit here and you're not up to time-looping to try and extend it. You have to deal with this, now. 

 You'll explain what happened to his towels somehow, claim to have tossed them out the window, dream up a story, you'll think of something. Worry about that later. Right now you just get on your hands and knees and start wiping up the mess, stuck between panic and not thinking at all, just trying to get as much up as you can. It all needs to be gone,  there needs to be nothing for Karkat to find, but you don't need to think to clean. 

 And you don't think. Your mind, for this moment, is a blank, as empty as a dry-erase board but for the color. White is clean; you haven't been clean for so long, fucking years...your hands are bloody. Your clothes are bloody. Everything, all of you, is covered in blood, and even when you get around to wash it off it's never really gone. You're always bloody, if only in your head, and it's never going to go away.

 You don't know how, but you definitely lose track of time. The next thing you really register is a thud against the door, making you gasp and jerk up from your hands and knees, the towel you're holding falling to the floor. It seems like it's been a few minutes at the most since you've started, but you've managed to clean up most of the puddled blood, rinsed it down the shower drain; there's still smears and drips across the floor, but it's not as bad. 

 You're covered with it, though. Your sleeves are deep muddy  up past your elbows, and there's a Rorschach blot on the front of your shirt. Looking at it makes you dizzy, ready to puke, so you look at the door instead, flinching as Karkat knocks again. That's all the noise was, but that's still definitely bad, and holy fucking shit you're scared. 

 "Dave." He sounds half-asleep still, and maybe you have half a chance to bullshit your way out of this. "Are you in there? Or did you fucking ditch me?" Or you would have a chance, if you could think straight. "Strider. Hello? Dave?" 

 Fuck. 

 Door's not locked. 

 He's already trying the knob as you dive to block the door; you slip on a still-wet patch of floor and fail miserably to even come close, slamming your head against the counter hard enough to blur your vision. 

 You could get up. Instead you curl up on the floor, not moving to look up. Let him just walk away. 

 "Dave—fuck." His voice goes quieter than you've ever heard it. "No, Dave, fuck..." 

 If you just stay on the floor, he'll walk away. If you stay still. He'll turn around, he'll walk back out, and when he comes back you'll have had a little more time to clean up, calm down, and get to the point where you can fake being all right. Just...please. 

 Karkat's talking to himself in Alternian, and even though you can't read the tone of the utterly alien language, you can tell that he's talking faster than he was earlier. He's upset. For a second you think he's going to leave anyway, for whatever reason; then you feel his hands on your shoulders, trying to turn you so he can see your face. "Dave, what—how bad are you hurt, what happened—" 

 Damn. "Go back to sleep." Your voice wants to shake and break, and you don't dare let it. You can't look at him, either, as you push yourself up off the floor and sit up. "I'm—fucking f-fine. Go on, get out, this'll be gone when you wake up, I swear." Shit shit shit, you think you're crying. "God, I'm sorry. I should've stayed away..." 

 Karkat's quiet for a good half-minute after you run out of words. You can't look at him, but you hear him sigh and get to his feet; when you do force yourself to glance up he's pulling his sweater off over his head, folding it with quick, impatient movements and setting it up on the counter before kneeling down next to you again. "Shut the fuck up." You can't keep from flinching when he takes your hand, pushing your sleeve up to show skin that's scarred and bloody but not, currently, bleeding. "What did you do?" 

 There's got to be a couple thousand ways to say it that can come off as you being more or less okay. You know there are; a dozen flash through your head in the few seconds before you need to provide some kind of reply. Maybe with a few more seconds, you could've delivered a smooth enough answer to satisfy him. 

 But Karkat finishes checking your arms and reaches up to put his hands on the sides of your head, gently but so fucking firmly forcing you to hold still and look at him as he examines you, and you cannot keep any fucking semblance of being okay in place. 

 "I—fucking dead Daves, man," you say, and you're not sure how you get even that much out before your throat closes up and your vision blurs and splinters. The tears burn, and you close your eyes against them, taking a deep breath and holding it. As long as you're not breathing, you're in control, but you can only do that for so long. After maybe half a minute, you exhale as slowly as you can, drawing in enough air to get another sentence out. "Get out. P-please. I can clean this up." Please let him just listen to you, back off and give you enough time to get rid of everything that shows than anything happened, let you calm the fuck down enough to slip out, go back to your room and lock the door and melt down where he won't see or know. 

 He's still got his hands on your face, and even though it's not on the list of things you want to do, you open your eyes, blinking until your sight's more or less clear. Which mean a certain amount of wetness ends up on your face...damn. 

 Karkat's frowning, yellow eyes flicking between your face and the blood on your clothes; you barely manage not to flinch as he shifts one hand to wipe at the tears on your face with his thumb. "What the fuck...don't worry about cleaning. I'll deal with it later. Dave, are you okay?" 

 Funny. When you've got two things in your head—"I'm fine," (true enough, you aren't bleeding unless it's from where you cracked your stupid head against the counter) and "I'm dead" (you have been, so many times, and there's a small but significant part of your mind that says you should be now)—you can get the first word out, no problem, but the second one, the important one, comes out as a choked, unintelligible noise. A sob, maybe, if you're being honest, and you need to just fucking nod, convince him you're all right, but instead you twist out of his hands and scoot backwards until your back hits the wall. 

 Your face is wet, but when you go to wipe at it you realise both your hands are currently unsuitable for that, unless you want blood smeared across your face. 

 "Dave." Karkat's voice isn't enough to get you to look up from the mess you've made. Besides, if you don't look at him he'll give up. Has to. "Dave..." No. You can't. "Dave fucking Strider. Hey." 

 Maybe the words are harsh, but his tone's gentle, and so are your hands as he reaches for your wrists, pulling your hands out of your lap and wiping the blood away as best he can with the bottom of his T-shirt before carefully wrapping his arms around you, pulling you half-into his lap. You...really feel like you shouldn't admit that this is what you need, that you're weak enough to want to be held like this, but you don't really have a choice at this point. Karkat's got you, you don't have the mental strength to just pull away, and even as you give up and slump against him, pressing your face against his shoulder so he won't see that you're crying and taking slow breaths so he won't hear you sob, he's patting your back gently, smoothing your hair and making soft, calming noises instead of talking at you. 

 God, you've made a mess. Karkat doesn't need to deal with your shit, and you've failed miserably at not getting him tangled up in the aftermath. The worst part, maybe, is that you don't want him to leave you to deal with it—you know that it'd be better for him, he fucking should, but you need him. 

 Eventually, you manage to let him go—push him away, actually, and damn but that's hard—and swipe at your eyes with your sleeve. Which just means blood ends up on the only clean part of you. 

 "Oh, shit." Turning away from Karkat, you grab one of the towels—it's wet, but there's at least one corner that's not stained up yet, and you scrub at your face with that. "I'm sorry, man, this shit...I shouldn't have been...fuck." One sentence. You'd like to get one sentence out without fucking it up. "I'm sorry." 

 No answer for a minute. Then, "You're going to hurt yourself," Karkat says softly, and tugs the towel out of your hand. He stands up, running water from the sink on the clean part of the towel, then sits back down on the floor next to you. "Take your shirt off, we'll get rid of the mess, all right?" 

 Yes. No. "Uh...let me finish cleaning up, I'll just...go home when I'm done. I—" 

 Karkat growls. It's a surprisingly loud and deep sound, maybe because he's doing it on purpose rather than as some kind of involuntary reflex, and even though it's not all that threatening it's enough to surprise you into shutting up. 

 "You," he says levelly, with a touch of the growl still in his voice, "don't need to do any more. And you're not going anywhere, either—you'd get halfway and either scare some idiot shitless, or someone'd try to cull you. Or both. Cooperate, nookbrain." 

 Well. Shit. "Don't I get a choice here—"

 "No." He scowls at you, crossing his arms huffily. "Quit being so difficult—you covered in blood isn't something that belongs in my bathroom. Or any universe I'm in." 

 "Uh." Oh. Yeah. Karkat has a worse hang-up over blood than you do, you remember, and you're...covered in it. Now that you look at him, he is too, at least everywhere that you touched him. Which. Fuck. "Yeah. Maybe. Shit, I'm sorry." Apparently, that wasn't the response he expected from you, and you avoid his confused stare by trying to take your shirt off without letting any of the already-drying wet spots touch you. 

 That's both awkward and mildly impossible, and occupies a full minute at least. Even with your best efforts, you still come out with your eyes squeezed shut and a grimace on your face, having still somehow succeeded in dragging half-wet, tacky, bloody cloth across your face. 

 Karkat catches your wrist as you raise your hand to start pawing at the blood on your face. "Hold still." 

 That's definitely easier said than done—even though you're expecting it, it's hard not to jerk away when the damp, slightly warm towel touches your face. You're good enough at controlling yourself, though, that you barely twitch at that first contact, and you stay still after that as Karkat wipes the mess away. He makes a brief effort to scrub your hair clean (how the fuck did you get blood in your hair? How?) but growls after a second of that, finally letting go of your wrist and moving down to start wiping off your chest. 

 "Hey..." Okay, now you have to open your eyes. "I—shit. I mean, thanks, okay, I—" You what? Where the hell is the rest of that sentence, where did it go? "Stop, I'm okay, I'm good, just..." 

 Karkat sits back on his heels, cocking his head to one side and waiting until you get done verbally floundering, then shakes his head and offers you the towel. "Shush. Calm the fuck down, all right?" 

 "I'm not—" 

 "Why the fuck are you freaking out? I'm not mad at you. You can stop panicking, Dave. It's over. I'll clean this shit up, it'll be fine. Calm. Down." He sighs, glancing down at the towel that you haven't yet taken from him. "Look, this is stupid. Either clean yourself up or let me do it." 

 "Karkat—" You don't have an answer to that, no quick comeback, nothing. You can't even look at him as you take the towel and start wiping red smears and streaks away. God, you're pathetic...when you can't find any noticeable blood left, you look back up. "Hey—" 

 He's frowning, sitting there with an expression that says he never stopped watching you. "If you tell me that you're sorry again," he says calmly, "or tell me to go away, again, I swear to gog I'm going to slap you, Strider." 

 You were, in fact, going to do both of those, but it's easy enough to change conversational lanes. "No, I—can I borrow a shirt? I'll give it back, I just—need something to walk back to my room in, and my shirt's—" 

 "Yeah. It's fucked." Karkat gets to his feet, reaching down to grab your shoulder and more-or-less gently pulling you to your feet. There's a second where you almost resist, for no reason you can come up with, but it's quick enough that you don't think he notices. Even if he does, he doesn't say anything, just steering you out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, flicking the lights off in one and on in the other, without easing up with his grip on your shoulder. "T-shirt or long sleeves?" he asks, finally turning you loose and stepping over to the dresser to pull open a drawer and rummage around inside. 

 Having him not looking at you makes it slightly easier to think, not that the question's hard. "Long sleeves. Please." 

 Waiting for him to find one, you find yourself looking down at your hands. They still feel like they should be red with blood, but at this point it's in your head. If that was all that was in your head, you'd be pretty fucking close to fine, but of course there's more, a hell of a lot more, or will be once your mind's not occupied with other shit. As soon as you don't have to think about cleaning up, or about Karkat, what you need to do next—as soon as you let your brain go on autopilot—you're going to get treated to whatever memories the version of yourself you just killed had that you didn't. 

 In other words, it's going to suck, but your consideration of exactly how much it's going to suck is interrupted by Karkat tossing a black shirt at you. 

 Of course you fumble it. What else? 

 Karkat snickers quietly as you pull the shirt over your head. It actually pretty much fits you, better than a lot of your own clothes do, which means it'd be something like ridiculously large on him. As you put it on, you consider what he'd look like wearing it—sleeves bunched up around his wrists, hem either hanging halfway to his knees or tied up in a knot. 

 He looks you over, then raises his eyebrows. "You're smiling." 

 Shit, he's right. "Am not." 

 "You're an idiot." Karkat rolls his eyes, grabbing something else out of the drawer and tossing it to you before you can deny that second statement. This time, you actually manage to catch it. "I'll be right back. Your pants are...well, ruined. Those should fit you, more or less." 

 And he leaves you holding a pair of his sweatpants and staring stupidly down at the maroon stains across your own pants. Damn but there's a lot on your knees. 

 Thankfully, the material that your pants are made of is significantly less susceptible to having bodily fluids soak straight through to your skin, and there's a lot less blood on your lower body than there was on your upper. It's easy to wipe off what traces there are before putting the pants he gave you on. 

 They also fit. 

 What the hell? How the fuck does he have clothes that fit you? Does he wear these or does he just have them? Why the fuck would he "just have" clothes several sizes too big for him? 

 Maybe just standing there, fiddling with the drawstring, trying to remember how the fuck to tie a knot and considering why Karkat has clothes, isn't the best idea. What's running through your head is, apparently, close enough to "nothing" for your mind to decide that you're no longer in a situation where you need to be aware of your surroundings, and to spit out a memory that isn't precisely something you've lived through. 

 Most of what you're aware of is a fuckton of pain and fear. That there's blood on your hands, mostly not yours but Jade's and Dirk's. You couldn't have saved Jade, pretty much no one could've—you blink and see her, memory inside of a memory, her fucking throat ripped apart—but Dirk, he was your fault, Jane's trying to bring him back but you didn't have to kill him in the first place...you need her to fix him. You can't do this by yourself, he's the fucking planner, and you need some kind of plan, because sooner or later John will come back, and odds are that he still won't be John. You need to—

 The memory doesn't just fade away or end; it fucking explodes, dissolving into red and white, blood and bone, a whirlwind of what used to be your friends. People you got killed. Or that you killed. 

 "Hey. Dave?" 

 "Fuck—" You don't even realise how much you disconnected from what you're actually doing until Karkat says your name. Even his familiar and fairly-safe voice sends a spike of fear and adrenaline into your chest. "Yeah. Hey. Sorry." This is going to be a bad one. This is going to be a very bad couple of hours or days, however long it takes for you to absorb the memories, and you need to walk away. "I—" Just tell him you need to go. Just turn around and walk out. "Shit."

 You can't do it. You physically, mentally, cannot move. 

 "Dave, are you okay?" Karkat touches your shoulder, and he's gentle about it but this time you can't catch yourself before you flinch. "Hey. Strider, talk to me." 

 You can't do anything but look at him, and before he can say anything else, a memory that's just two quick images blots out your vision for a second. Karkat, shoving at you playful, his mouth open as he laughs at something—god, have you ever seen him laugh like that before? No, you haven't, not in this timeline, and holy fuck but can you just sell your soul to keep him that happy? 

 But there's the second one. 

 Still Karkat, but this time he's on his knees, splattered with blood and holding onto one arm, snarling up at something or someone. The blood, most of it, is too dark to be his, but he's bleeding from a cut in his forehead and his sweater—it's soaked with so much candy-red blood you can't fucking process it—

 "Fuck, Dave!" 

 Funny. You didn't know you could forget to breathe for long enough to get this dizzy, for your legs to decide they're totally fucking done holding you up. You also didn't know that Karkat is capable of grabbing your arm and supporting you when you're more or less resigned to a rendezvous with the floor. 

 On some level, you know you're scaring him, but you're so fucking frozen by the shit you keep seeing, still scared and guilty and just...wanting to mourn the people you let die and the people you got killed. You can't get any words out, not even a simple "I'm fine," a little white lie that he'll more or less believe. Hell, you don't know if you even want to lie, even if that's what'd be best for both of you. 

 "Dave, come on, fucking look at me..."

 You can't. You can barely handle just standing up and holding onto him—all you want to do right now is to go limp, curl up on the floor and wait for all this shit to pass, if out ever will. Does it feel like this every time? Like it's never going to stop, the fucking flood of shit you don't want to know or remember will just wash over you, drown you in a life that isn't yours—but, at the same time, is?

 You don't know. Can't remember. 

 Karkat growls, sighs, and half-drags you to the bed, pulling you down to sit next to him. He wraps his arms around you, muttering very quietly in Alternian as you lean over on him, and waits. 

 Listening to him, having him this close...that does help. Doesn't make the images stop surfacing, but it reminds you that if he's here, he's not dead. If he's not dead, neither is anyone else, and you haven't gotten anyone killed tonight, or killed anyone. Other than yourself, at least. 

 You keep telling yourself that, and after awhile you turn your head enough to look at him. "I'm sorry—" 

 "Shush. Stop." He frowns at you, a look on his face that you've never seen before. (Not in this timeline. It feels weirdly familiar, from the aggregate of knowledge you've ended up with from dead Daves and time shenanigans, though.) Worried. He's worried about you, and god but you feel guilty about that. "Is it always this bad?" 

 Yes. No. "Don't know." You do know that if he lets go of you, it'll be worse than it is now. 

 His frown deepens a little, maybe in confusion, but only for a second. "Fuck. Can you...I don't know, sleep it off?" 

 No, definitely not, but that's not what comes out of your mouth. "Can you stay with me? Please." You can't bring yourself to talk any louder than barely-not-whispering. You're lying even if you didn't answer his question, and yeah that's shitty but if it means he stays right where he is, it has to be worth it. 

 The noise he makes isn't one you can totally interpret—soft, low-pitched, kind of like he's shooshing you and kind of like he's growling but not really either. It's soothing, though, like it hits some instinctive trigger buried in your brain. "I won't leave you. Come here." 

 Even though you kind of know how strong he is, it's still a little surprising when Karkat just pulls you all the way up onto the bed, lying down next to you and only hesitating for a minute before putting his arms around you and settling there. "You okay?" he asks, softly.

 Well, shit. Lie? Or tell the truth?

 "Right now? No, not really." Closing your eyes means you don't have to see what he thinks of that answer, but on the other hand it also means that you get to see the images of dead friends a hell of a lot more clearly. Bad tradeoff, but hey. At some point, isn't everything?

 Karkat huffs, shifting to get into a more comfortable position, but he doesn't ask any more questions. You kind of wish he'd start purring, but you get why he isn't. He's warm, though, and that's...nice. A good thing. And even though you keep getting hit with memories of horrorterrors, blood, and flashes of phantom pain, this is almost okay. Maybe more than almost. Definitely okay enough for you to fall asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> watch me use completely unsupported headcanons altogether too confidently!


	4. Chapter 4

 You wake up disoriented and confused, opening your eyes to sky that's dark and devoid of stars—why are you standing up? What the hell—

 And John screams something that hurts your mind to hear, you manage to focus on him, and you know that everything else was just a hallucination in the heartbeat between him throwing you against the wall the first time and now. You don't have time to do more that begin to go for your sword as he lunges at you. 

 You get the weapon in your hand, though, as his hands close around your throat, and maybe if you actually had the guts to swing at him, you might have taken off his fucking grimdark head. But fuck, he's still your oldest friend—when he's of his own mind, he's your best friend—and you hesitate. 

 That's enough to get you killed. 

 John sees the sword out of the corner of his eye—your style's never actually been about subtlety—and he does let go of you with one hand, for just long enough to grab your wrist and twist it hard enough that bones crack. You don't want to let go, but you can't hang on past the agony in your hand.   
 His hands are back around your neck before the sword clatters against the ground, bone-crushingly tight and inhumanly strong. It hurts to try to get your fingers under his hands, break his grip, and it's not doing any good as far as you can tell, but you can't breathe and you're so fucking desperate. 

 The bastard's smiling. He could snap your neck like a twig, but he likes this. He's going to make you die as slow as he can, keep letting you think you have a chance so he can snuff out that hope little by little. 

 You can't breathe. You can't think. You're going to die, capital-D Die because you let this happen and you could've done the smart thing, fucked with time instead of staying and trying to save people, instead of playing at being something you aren't. You get to be wrong one more time—you know you're no hero, but you also know that this, as stupid and pointless as it is, is probably going to count as Heroic.

 This is the end. 

 It hurts. More than it should, at this point when your vision is almost completely gone and you don't have enough strength to keep trying to pry him off. Your throat's on fire. It shouldn't hurt so much, you don't want the last thing you ever feel to be pain—

 "Dave! Stop, fuck, you're—Dave, wake up—" 

 Everything is dark, but that's not John's voice talking to you. He's got ahold of you, but his hands are on your wrists, not your throat, and he's not trying to hurt you, just struggling to keep you pinned even though you can't stop fighting him for the first minute or so. 

 When the realisation kicks in that you were dreaming, that you're not about to die or have to kill your friend, you manage to force yourself to go limp. That's almost easy, compared to getting your voice to work. "K-Karkat." 

 "Right here." You've never heard him this scared. Tonight is just full of really-damn-unpleasant new experiences. "Are you—" 

 "Lights. Please." That's probably not one of the possible answers to the question he's trying to ask you, but you can't think beyond what might be hiding in the dark. You don't move as Karkat slowly takes his hands off you, as you feel him get off the bed. When he switches the lights on, you can feel a good portion of that fear drain away, enough that you can finally get yourself to move. 

 As you sit up, Karkat comes back to sit by you, grabbing your hand before you can finish reaching up to check why your neck still hurts. "Dave, careful...you're bleeding." 

 "Goddamn." That'd explain it. You want to probe the painful spots anyway, see how bad it is; instead you hold onto his hand, trying not to squeeze too hard. "Uh, what...what did I do?" 

 Oh, yeah, he gives you a worried look for that, like he's seriously considering the possibility that you're losing your mind a little. "You don't remember?"

 "I was asleep." 

 "Oh." He nods, glancing down before looking back up at your face. You can feel telltale wetness on your neck now—in a little bit it'll be sticky, you know. God but you hate that. "I'm guessing you were dreaming, right?" 

 "Bingo." He's going to want to know what it was about, you know he will, and you're dreading the process of talking through it for him. 

 Except, surprisingly, he doesn't ask. "I woke up because you were moving around," he says instead. "When I sat up to see if you were awake, you—fuck, you screamed. For John, I think." He pauses, maybe to give you space to confirm or deny that. You're not even close to giving him either, and after a second of silence, he continues. "I was going to wake you up, but you started—crying. And clawing at your fucking throat like you were trying to get something off...are you going to be okay? Just—you're scaring the shit out of me, Dave, I don't know what to do to fix this." 

 He can't. That's the real answer, that he can't fix you because you're not fixable, but you're not going to say that. If he lets you, you're not going to say anything, just sit here quietly and try not to think about anything. Well, other than the fact that Karkat hasn't pulled his hand out of yours yet. That's a good, non-painful thing to think about. 

 "Dave—"  

 Oh. Yeah. He did ask a question, didn't he? "It'll go away." Not exactly a legit answer, but close enough. "It always does. It's—I get his memories. My memories, the Daves that die, their memories." 

 He's going to ask what happened to that Dave. 

 "This happens to you every time?" His voice scales up at the end of the sentence, more than the sentence demands—surprise, maybe. 

 "Uh-huh." At this point, you can kind of act like it's not a big thing, play cool even if he did just get to see you have a meltdown over this shit. "Not always this bad, though...and going to sleep was stupid." 

 Karkat shrugs uncomfortably, glancing away from you for a second. "Sorry...do you want me to get the first aid kit for your neck?" 

 Damn. He was the one who suggested sleeping it off, wasn't he? "Don't be sorry, man." You're the one who should've known better. "You made this a couple of orders of magnitude less awful, trust me..." As for his actual question, you reach up with your free hand, feeling across the new marks on your neck as quickly as you can before Karkat grabs your wrist and makes you stop. It's sore, but there's only traces of blood on your fingertips when Karkat pulls your hand down. "My neck's fine. Don't worry about it." 

 He stares at you for a long moment before he lets your hand go. "You're sure?" 

 "It looks worse than it is, I promise." Amazingly, it's barely an effort to find a smile for him, and easy enough to find a way to change the subject. "Hey...I still owe you a romcom or two, right? Is now an okay time to watch a couple?" 

 "Any time's an okay time for that." Karkat nods, glancing down for a second, which reminds you that you're still holding his hand and he's probably at the point where he might not want you to. Time to pull back inside your own personal space, you guess. "If you want to watch one of yours—"

 "Nah." You don't actually care that much about the movie; you just want to watch him, and his favorite movies are one of the things that have a bigger chance to get him to smile. "A deal's a deal, and I just want to watch something I don't need to think about, you know?" 

 Karkat rolls his eyes, getting to his feet and offering you a hand up. You don't need the help, but you're more than happy to take it. "I feel like that's an insult to romcoms, Strider." 

 "Only if you take it that way. Now, I could totally come up with a whole range of insults for 'em—I could say that they're unrealistic, or that the plots are either really fuckin' cliché or completely off the wall and shit, pretty predictable either way, or a couple dozen other weak points about your choice of genre—but hey, I'm not going to bring any of that up right now, y'know?" 

 The whole time you're running your mouth, Karkat's steering you back into the living room, and you really only stop because he gives you a gentle shove towards the pile of blankets on the floor. "You literally just brought it up," he points out as he pulls a DVD off the shelf and puts the disc in the player. 

 "Yeah, but now I'm off the subject." You shove a couple pillows out of the spot you've picked, and smile innocently up at him. "Unless you want me to keep exploring it."

 "Please don't." He comes over to sit by you, grabbing the pillows you rejected and incorporating them into his area of the pile, which is acceptably close to your section. "I already know you're going to play 'find the plotholes and annoy Karkat' for the whole movie; let's not add 'malign the whole fucking genre' to that." 

 "Maybe I'm gonna surprise you." You kind of surprise yourself as soon as you say that, by reaching out without even thinking to find his hand. 

 Bad idea?

 Apparently not, because Karkat just laces his fingers through yours and keeps his eyes on the movie, not saying anything. You don't watch the movie—you listen to it, kind of, but mostly you just watch him and sort through the shit you didn't know a couple of hours ago. Some of it's fading—you always lose some of the inherited memories, the ones that're less important and the ones that could cause paradoxes and other kinds of trouble if you remembered them. Even with what you're already losing, there was a fucking huge time gap between that Dave and you. 

 The movie's halfway through when you get around to processing the two chunks of knowledge that make you first gasp and then start laughing, not because they're funny but because you can barely believe that they're actually something that happened in a timeline this close to the one you're in. They're going to happen again, too, you know that you're going to make this the good timeline and the real timeline, and holy shit but it's going to be good in the end. 

 Karkat is looking at you like you've lost your mind. "Dave, what the fuck—"

 You hold up two fingers, not even thinking about what you're going to say as the words come out of your mouth. "Karkat, dude, we're gonna win this fucker, finish this stupid game and come out shining..." The second thing, you almost think about how to say it in a non-psycho way, but if you thought at all you'd probably shut your mouth, so you just keep talking. "I'm going to fall in love with you, he did and I will and holy fuck, I just..." 

 Time to stop talking, actually! Your face has got to be a whole new shade of red as you actually think about what you just told him, but you're still grinning. Like an idiot. 

 Karkat blinks. Then, amazingly, he smiles, and it's almost as good as the memory you got of him earlier. No, better. "You mean you didn't already?" he asks. "You're slow." 

 And he squeezes your hand, scoots a little closer, and turns his attention back to the movie. 

 Holy. Fucking. Shit. 

 Now that you think about it, you're not going to fall in love with him. He's right; you already did.


End file.
